Pop HazMat Captured Moments by Jonathan Kieran

Okay, so a hitherto planned “Ten Best Meals I Ever Ate” List is not going to appear today. I’m on the fourth day of a complete fast/cleanse, i.e. no solid food and only lemon-water, honey and cayenne pepper to sustain me. Thus, my long and illustrious history of gastronomic adventure is the last thing I want to expound-upon, at the moment. Instead, we’ll opt for some HazMat pop-culture profiling. Behold, the Alligator King and his brood of seven toothy tots.

You can COUNT on this song being stuck in your head all the livelong day!

Jonathan Kieran’s HAZMAT-RETRO HALL OF FAME

TODAY’S HONOREE:“7” by the Alligator King of Sesame Street (Voiced by Bud Luckey)

RUDIMENTARY ANALYSIS: Nothing warms the sweet cockles of wistful Kiddie Heart-Land like the memory of a Sesame Street “number song” that you couldn’t get out of your head at age five if you’d even tried. Forget about the fact that you used to you drive your poor mother bananas with endless repetitions of what you had learned. Forget about your mother’s desperate prayers that you would one day employ your knowledge of figures and digits to conquer Wall Street and put her in the most posh Park Avenue spread that money could buy. Irrelevant! These “number songs” were magical, and they were the top of the Toddler Hit Parade, back in the day, before Barney and Sponge-Bob and Ninja Turtles and Tellytubbies came around to rip the innocence of youth from our tender, fluttering souls with all manner of subtle-but-wanton devilry. Okay, so Barney wasn’t all that Evil. Still, none of the others could match Sesame Street’s penchant for producing cartoon ditties that made you want to COUNT until the cows came home! The plight of the Alligator King and his Seven Sons was one of the best, made all the more immortal by the swampy New Orleans ragtime inflections of the great Bud Luckey. What are you waiting for? 7-6-5-4-3-2-1 … SING IT!

DEFINITIVE LYRIC:Said the alligator king to his seventh son, “My son, you win the crown. You didn’t give me diamonds or rubies BUT you helped me up when I was down.”

SEMI-TWISTED “ADULT HUMOR” MOMENT: When the second son gives the Alligator King “seven statues of girls with clocks where their stomachs should be.” Surely this was some sort of perverted metaphor, but our beloved Jim Henson has taken the secret to his grave. Talk amongst yourselves about it, philosophers and sociologists.

Jonathan Kieran is the author of the Rowan Blaize series of epic contemporary fantasy books, as well as the critically acclaimed (Midwestern Book Review) Confessions From The Comments Section: The Secret Lives of Internet Commenters and Other Pop-Culture Zombies. His work has also been featured on The Daily Dot.com and in a plethora of other ‘zines. Click on the book covers to the right if you want to learn more about Jonathan’s titles or spend some of your hard-earned money on his multi-formatted gifts to the human race. Jonathan is currently writing and illustrating a new novel. Drop-in once in awhile for updates; he promises to provide them … once in awhile.

With the Goodreads promotion of Confessions from the Comments Section complete and the New Year finally rolling into some semblance of high gear, your friendly, neighborhood Existential Troubadour was especially pleased to receive word about Midwest Book Review’s sparkling praise for our latest literary emanation.

Midwest Book Review has been one of the nation’s most respected and comprehensive bastions of literary criticism since the mid-1970s, when it was founded by James Cox, who still wields his scepter with aplomb as the institution’s Editor-in-Chief. Midwest has always selected books for review with great care and acuity, ever on the lookout for worthy titles–not only from houses glittering with the incandescence of New York prestige, but also from the sturdy, less extravagant domiciles arranged in hopeful suburbs across the publishing landscape. Mr. Cox’s editorial prudence and the judicious enthusiasm of his seasoned team of critics are to be commended.

Especially when they treat our work in such appreciative fashion.

Confessions from the Comments Section: The Secret Lives of Internet Commenters and Other Pop Culture Zombies, was reviewed by Midwest and will indeed appear in the January 2016 installment of their venerable publication. Behold:

Humorous and insightful, Confessions from the Comments Section is a browse to prepare one’s self for the digitally interconnected 21st century. Remember, the internet is “written in ink”; your comments today will very likely be viewable decades in the future–perhaps by a potential employer or love interest doing a background check! As funny as it is forewarning, Confessions from the Comments Section is both a showcase of what not to do while exercising one’s right to free speech online … and a sparkling prize of inspiration for crafting Internet comments that convey a valuable and memorable message. Highly recommended!

-Clint Travis, MIDWEST BOOK REVIEW,Reader’s Bookwatch/January 2016

I would like to take the opportunity to express my gratitude to the stalwart forces at Midwest Book Review for this INCONTROVERTIBLY ACCURATE and CATEGORICALLY UNASSAILABLE assessment of my work. Long may such obvious and impeccable standards of uncompromising quality be maintained amid the chaos of contemporary publishing!

Of course, if you are one of the precious few who has yet to buy the book and see what this well-deserved fanfare is all about, I urge you to click the link to Confessions from the Comments Section on the sidebar and demonstrate both your admirable good sense and your Amazon One-Click skills.

Now, I really must get hopping on that comic strip I’ve been promising for months. Hundreds are awaiting this auspicious birth with bated breath! Celebratory cigars are growing stale in their humidors as we speak! But fear not, ye watchers and ye holy ones: Zanzibar Circus is about to be born. A few more contractions and one good yank of the sardonic forceps ought to do the trick.

“Society has gotten so vulgar that I can barely bring myself to watch the evening news these days, Sheila. Skanks and sinners. Murder, mayhem, miscreants, and other morons misbehaving. That’s all the media seems to care about anymore. I tell you, it’s a scandal. There’s nothing uplifting or wholesome out there in the mainstream to nourish a girl’s intellect.”

“Thank God for dystopian-steampunk-BDSM-vampire-erotica or my starving brain would just shrivel up and die.”

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Jonathan Kieran’s new novel is slated for release in Autumn 2014. Look for news about the release here and at Amazon.com in the coming weeks and months.

Jonathan is also the author of the classically appointed Rowan Blaize series of modern fairy-tales and novels. Visit Jonathan Kieran’s Official Facebook Page and give it a “Like,” if you are so inclined. Meanwhile …

Escape the Imminent Collapse of Civilization, if only for a few hours. A sweeping modern fairy-tale is born with the Rowan Blaize series of books. Click on the book covers to the right or have a look below …

Book One = The magical cornerstone – a lavishly illustratedepic narrative poem … a genuine “spell” for the young and young-at-heart to treasure for a lifetime, telling the story of sorcerer Rowan Blaize’s battle to regain his magic powers. (Think Beowulf-meets-Dr.Seuss or an epic story-in-verse of a scope similar to Tolkien’s soon-to-be-released The Fall of Arthur, only contemporary.)

Book Two = The rip-roaring novel that continues the adventures of Rowan Blaize and introduces the three hilarious witches of the Ancient City, along with its dysfunctional werewolves, wraiths, ghosts, vampires, dryads, banshees and a beauty pageant brat that just might destroy the world.

Book Three = The next novel that finds Rowan trapped by a spell in another world, caught between a faery-squashing sorceress who’ll stop at nothing to conquer the kingdom … and a feisty teenage prince who’s determined to get it back.

I can only imagine what the DVD/Video purveyor thinks of me when I barge into our tiny, local Mom & Pop shop on occasion and, after half an hour of milling-around and scrutinizing titles, end-up selecting a heap of the most disparate films imaginable to pile on the countertop. That’s how I roll, when it comes to film.

Maybe (make that “Likely”) it’s just me, but I start feeling more than a tad self-conscious about the wildly diverse nature of my selections when the cheerful, lace-collared Mormon clerk, ostensibly for the sake of small-town friendliness (or perhaps for sheer lack of anything more interesting to do), feels compelled to discuss each of my viewing choices as she checks them against her computer inventory. Whatever the reason, I can’t stand it when she’s working the place and I always dread that awkward ritual. It creates uncomfortable scenes, because then I feel obligated to explain my picks. Why can’t she just go hunt my movies down in the back room, ring the damn things up, and stare in malignant silence as if every customer were a pestilential inconvenience, like the teenagers do when they work the counter? But noooooo:

“Oh! I see you’ve rented Chariots of Fire! Now, isn’t that just one of the great classics that doesn’t seem to get the appreciation it deserves these days? So full of humanity. So rich in moral triumph. So inspiring!”

“Oh, I’ll say it is! And look at this. You’ve also picked … Why, it’s House of 1000 Corpses. Well, now, that’s a startling image on the cover there, isn’t it? With a sort of skinned skull staring out from what looks like a kind of mucous membrane, or possibly the lining peeled from someone’s eviscerated intestines. And then there’s that rivulet of blood dribbling down onto the woman’s heaving breasts, there. Hmmm. Now. Isn’t that something.”

“I … er … um … it’s … uh … one of Rob Zombie’s productions and I … well … for me he seems to grasp, by his unique use of imagery, certain otherwise overlooked aspects of the metaphysical quandary posed by the graphic depiction of human slaughter, and I … um …”

“Oh, sure. Sure! That quandary. Well, we all wonder about that, don’t we? Sure we do. Okie-dokie, let’s have a looky-loo at what else you’ve got in this stack today? Awww … Anne of Green Gables! That’s just one of the most adorable and wholesome stories ever told, what with Colleen Dewhurst as ‘Marilla’ and Richard Farnsworth as ‘Matthew’ and that wonderful little girl–I forget what the heck her name is–who played ‘Anne.’ This must be for your little girl at home! Oh, how old is your little girl? She’s going to love this! You know, I played this for my daughters when they were about eight or nine and it opened up a whole new world of imagination and reading for them. Why, it was just …”

“Um. Well, I don’t have a daughter, you see, I … um …”

“Oh?”

“No, I … see … I grew up only five miles from the Canadian border, and this series was filmed in Canada when I was still a kid, where the story itself originated, and the program was pretty much a cultural phenomenon for anyone remotely connected with Canada. Like a national treasure, really, and huge? Whah! Man, it was Star Wars huge … I mean, if you were Canadian, or pseudo-Canadian, so … um … the movie possesses a considerable nostalgic value for people like me who grew-up around the place and time it was made, therefore I like to revisit that sort of …”

“Of course you do. Sure! I understand. Look, we’ve all got our touchstones, right? Personally, I couldn’t watch a movie featuring that lovely Green Gables farm and then switch right over to a house full of a million corpses, but to each his own, I say.”

“It’s … um … a thousand corpses.”

“What?”

“A thousand corpses. It’s House of 1000 Corpses. Not a million. I mean, that’d be a lot of corpses for one house, don’t you think? Still, I could envision a thousand corpses being contained in just one house, depending upon how they were stacked and stored, mind you. Now, take a house like Anne’s at Green Gables, you know? That house, to me, could hold a thousand corpses, no problem, what with the upstairs bedrooms and that cute little parlor, there, where Anne invites Diana Barry over for tea and there follows the ill-fated Raspberry Cordial incident? Yeah, you could stuff some bodies in that room. Not to mention Marilla’s root cellar, which is only alluded to, I realize. And then there’s Matthew’s barn, but then I suppose you get into the question of whether the barn can be considered a part of the actual house or merely as a dependency of the house, and that’s a matter of debate, so when it comes to corpses and storing them …”

“Even the most well-tended gardens can occasionally become infested with unwelcome pests that threaten to obliterate your most prized perennials, or make a mockery of the relentless toil, time and hard-earned money you’ve spent to make everything look truly spectacular. Don’t be dismayed, friends–it can happen to anyone. Even me! Let’s have a look around, shall we?”

“Some of the most disgusting and repulsive creatures imaginable can be found hiding in the moist darkness beneath leafy patches like this one. All you have to do is rummage around a bit and you’re sure to find something horrendous. Why, look. I was right. Here are two of the most common and despicable enemies of the American garden, lurking right beneath our fingertips!”

“Oh! Thank heaven you found us here! We’ve been hiding from the alien agents of Planet-X for days. They’ve placed mind-control devices in Godzilla, Rodan and Mothra, and plan to use the monsters as weapons against humanity! Will you take us to your president so we can warn him?”

“He’s golfing. Do you think I’m going to interrupt him for that? Hey! You pestilential little bastards chewed right through the roots of my honeysuckle. The fragrance is gone. It’s like all the beauty and goodness has been sucked straight out of my world.”

“We were hungry and afraid of being discovered by our enemies from Planet-X! Plus, we have a bizarre tendency to gnaw upon things when we get nervous. It’s totally OCD. Please forgive. We didn’t mean any harm.”

“Do you two wretched bug-bites really expect me to believe that load of bull$#%t?”

“You must listen to us! We are the only ones who can save Earth from the apocalyptic doom that awaits. As a bonus, our droppings can be blended with honey to create a shampoo that will leave your blonde locks silky-smooth without the need for fancy conditioners!”

“If you, too, encounter honeysuckle hornworms in the garden, don’t be swayed by strange stories about treacherous aliens, monsters intent upon global destruction, or empty promises about miraculous hair products. These are just filthy lies and seductive temptations intended to distract you from the proper care of your plants. And let’s face it –we all know that Pantene Super-Volumizing conditioner just can’t be beat. I mean, hello?!??!”

“It’s true, it’s true! Our poo can save your ‘do. And if you heed our warning, you can thwart the monsters, too!”

“When the vermin starts to ply you with little rhymes, the gardener’s best defense is to rely upon an old-fashioned pest-control product that is not only safe for the environment but certain to get the job done in a jiffy! I happen to have some here in my hand. Let’s put it to work, shall we?”

“Feel free to sprinkle liberally if your infestation is particularly virulent and annoying.”

“PLEASE! DON’T!!!! We’re the last of our kind, for God’s sake! Don’t you want the world to survive? Don’t you believe in magic?”

“No, not really.”

“Well, that about does it for today’s show folks. Remember: when it comes to eliminating destructive outdoor pests, it ain’t no thing but a chicken wing!”

Escape the Imminent Collapse of Civilization, Friends, if only for a few hours. A sweeping modern fairy-tale is born with the Rowan Blaize series of books. Click on the book covers to the right or have a look below …

Book One = The magical cornerstone – a lavishly illustratedepic narrative poem … a genuine “spell” for the young and young-at-heart to treasure for a lifetime, telling the story of sorcerer Rowan Blaize’s battle to regain his magic powers. (Think Beowulf-meets-Dr.Seuss or an epic story-in-verse of a scope similar to Tolkien’s soon-to-be-released The Fall of Arthur, only contemporary.)

Book Two = The rip-roaring novel that continues the adventures of Rowan Blaize and introduces the three hilarious witches of the Ancient City, along with its dysfunctional werewolves, wraiths, ghosts, vampires, dryads, banshees and a beauty pageant brat that just might destroy the world.

Book Three = The next novel that finds Rowan trapped by a spell in another world, caught between a faery-squashing sorceress who’ll stop at nothing to conquer the kingdom … and a feisty teenage prince who’s determined to get it back.

In what is being termed “a brutal act of despicable retaliation” for a recent vegan attack on the Iowa State Fair’s traditional Butter-Cow, a group of carnivores slaughtered an assortment of innocent vegetables that were kidnapped on Monday evening from the Frail & Pale Café –a popular vegan bistro– in downtown Dubuque. The grisly murders were apparently committed by cover of night on the steps of City Hall itself, and a note was left by the presumed perpetrators, warning vegans that: “… this is only the beginning, you willowy freaks! For the honor of Butter-Cows across the globe, we will be unleashing an apocalypse of vegetable butchery unprecedented in the annals of history. The torture and pain experienced by your beloved comrades will know no limits. Asparagus shall be shocked! Beans shall be baked! Onions shall be diced! Tomatoes shall be quartered! Our knives will plunge without mercy into every artichoke heart we can get our hands upon! The very rivers will run red with ratatouille! You’ve messed with the wrong butter-loving psychopaths, you anemic bastards!”

While no specific carnivore activist group has stepped forward to claim responsibility for this heinous crime against plant-life, investigators have their eyes on a number of militant factions and intend to round-up suspects for questioning in the next few days. Meanwhile, Rain Softsparrow, 29, the owner of the Frail & Pale Café, lamented the gruesome fate of her beloved friends:

“The cops showed me photos of the crime scene, you know? To see if I could, like, identify any of the victims. Oh my God, it was a nightmare. [sniff.] I’ve never seen so much carnage, so much wanton cruelty. Yeah, I recognized my friends amid the heaps of relentless gore. There was Ryan, a zucchini squash who had been with us for so long. So wise and centered, such a spiritual force in our circle. And there he was, just freakin’ disemboweled, man! And poor Laura’s seeds were strewn throughout the slaughter –she was a bell pepper we all loved and respected. Total angel. God, I can still hear the screams of the asparagus sisters in my mind! And for what? Some vile capitalist abomination like the Iowa butter-cow? Insane! This’ll haunt us all forever. If I had, like, anything solid in my stomach to throw-up, I would, like, blow serious chunks … just thinking about the bloodlust. I’m scarred for life, dude. How could anyone not be, you know? Doctors have already put me on a regimen of iron supplements just to cope. [sniff. sniff.] I only hope that, you know, they catch the people who did this and, like, kill them, you know? Kill them and their wives and their babies. Excuse me, I have to lay down for a minute. I’m a little dizzy. I only had an air smoothie for breakfast.” [sniff.]

Pop HazMat will continue to follow this terrifying story as new evidence emerges and as the investigation continues. Photos from the crime scene are featured below, but we warn you: THESE IMAGES ARE GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING. GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING. GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING. GRAPHIC AND DISTURBING.

Forensic specialists are analyzing the murder weapon (upper left), which was left at the scene of these incomprehensible dismemberments. Victims’ full names are being withheld pending results of DNA tests and the notification of next-of-produce.

Emergency Technicians and forensic detectives perform the grisly task of gathering victims in body-bags for immediate transport to the Medical Examiner’s lab.

Escape the Imminent Collapse of Civilization, Friends, if only for a few hours. A sweeping modern fairy-tale is born with the Rowan Blaize series of books. Click on the book covers to the right or have a look below …

Book One = The magical cornerstone – a lavishly illustratedepic narrative poem … a genuine “spell” for the young and young-at-heart to treasure for a lifetime, telling the story of sorcerer Rowan Blaize’s battle to regain his magic powers. (Think Beowulf-meets-Dr.Seuss or an epic story-in-verse of a scope similar to Tolkien’s soon-to-be-released The Fall of Arthur, only contemporary.)

Book Two = The rip-roaring novel that continues the adventures of Rowan Blaize and introduces the three hilarious witches of the Ancient City, along with its dysfunctional werewolves, wraiths, ghosts, vampires, dryads, banshees and a beauty pageant brat that just might destroy the world.

Book Three = The next novel that finds Rowan trapped by a spell in another world, caught between a faery-squashing sorceress who’ll stop at nothing to conquer the kingdom … and a feisty teenage prince who’s determined to get it back.

Behold the Vision of Horror that every disobedient Latino child will see in his worst nightmares for years to come! Listen up, frustrated abuelitas! These tricked-out chanclas are a hard-working Latina mom’s SWEETEST DAYDREAM. Take pride in knowing that nothing is beyond the scope of your disciplinary power and irrefutable authority when you stalk the floors of your well-swept home in a set of these dazzling beauties. Smart-mouthed children will quail in fear at the sound of these stealth-weapons whirring through the air towards their vulnerable heads! Moody husbands shall run for cover when you so much as reach toward the ground! Even burglars will think twice before entering a house where a woman is known to wield a Super-Chancla! Don’t wait, Ladies. “Arm your Feet for the Good of the Future” with Las Super-Chanclas! [Available now at Macy’s. $29.99 while supplies last. Adjustable super-sonic heels and patented Lacerating Rhinestone Side-Studs sold separately.]

Escape the Imminent Collapse of Civilization, Friends, if only for a few hours. A sweeping modern fairy-tale is born with the Rowan Blaize series of books. Click on the book covers to the right or have a look below …

Book One = The magical cornerstone – a lavishly illustratedepic narrative poem … a genuine “spell” for the young and young-at-heart to treasure for a lifetime, telling the story of sorcerer Rowan Blaize’s battle to regain his magic powers. (Think Beowulf-meets-Dr.Seuss or an epic story-in-verse of a scope similar to Tolkien’s soon-to-be-released The Fall of Arthur, only contemporary.)

Book Two = The rip-roaring novel that continues the adventures of Rowan Blaize and introduces the three hilarious witches of the Ancient City, along with its dysfunctional werewolves, wraiths, ghosts, vampires, dryads, banshees and a beauty pageant brat that just might destroy the world.

Book Three = The next novel that finds Rowan trapped by a spell in another world, caught between a faery-squashing sorceress who’ll stop at nothing to conquer the kingdom … and a feisty teenage prince who’s determined to get it back.